Global Plastic Waste Report
Dhruvin Modh, Sandhya Erland Chandrasekar, Xinyu Wang
Problem Introduction
- Plastic waste is a growing threat to both land and marine ecosystems.
- Many countries generate high levels of plastic but lack efficient recycling systems.
- Coastal regions are especially vulnerable to plastic leakage into oceans.
- We aim to identify key risk factors and regional disparities in plastic waste patterns.
Dataset Description
Dataset: Plastic Waste Around the World
Coverage: - This dataset includes data for 165 individual countries
Key Variables:
Total plastic waste generated (in metric tonnes)
Per capita plastic waste (in kilograms)
National recycling rate (in percentage)
Coastal plastic waste risk level
Source: The dataset is retrieved from a publicly available GitHub repository called Pranu580 that compiles plastic waste statistics from multiple global environmental datasets.
Methods
- Data cleaning with janitor, filtering missing values
- Binned recycling rate into Low, Medium, High (using quantiles)
- Derived population estimates and waste-per-person metrics
- Grouped by coastal risk and recycling category
Top 10 Countries by Per Capita Waste
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Figure Shown: Horizontal bar chart
- Countries: Iceland, Malta, Cyprus, Palau, etc.
- High per capita waste in tourist-heavy nations
- Color-coded by recycling category (green, orange, red)
Waste vs. Recycling Rate
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Figure Shown: Horizontal bar chart
- Scatter plot with linear trend line
- Weak inverse relationship: more waste often correlates with lower recycling
- Key insight: High waste ≠ High recycling